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Grassroots relief fund raising in North America
The Main Idea There are concerted efforts going on in various parts of North America and the rest of the world, where people are mobilizing and trying to get the word out to the masses in these countries as to how they can donate to relief efforts for the [[Earthquake 10-05|'recent earthquake in Pakistan']]. This page can form a networking point where various people can put up ideas, requests, questions, answers to the various issues that come up when trying to attempt fund raising. The underlying theme is: get as much money to organizations working on relief efforts in Pakistan. Also, it's a good way to get to know who's involved and who's doing what, so if you're comfortable with it, please say who you are when you're writing here. Contact points in specific institutions/cities * Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mellon University: Jahanzeb Sherwani, jsherwan+pkwiki@cs.cmu.edu, PhD student at * Oakland, CA, Mills College: Fiza Fatima Asar, fasar@mills.edu, Undergrad student at * Montreal, Canada, McGill University: Tamreez Inam, tamreez.inam@mail.mcgill.ca, psa_earthquake@yahoo.com, Undergrad student at * New York/New Jersey: ** South Asian Women's Creative Collective: Roohi Choudhry, roohinala@gmail.com ** This site has drop-off sites, etc.: http://www.reliefefforts.us/ * Person 4 Plans in specific areas * Plans / organization for fund raising by students in Pittsburgh * Working to collaborate the various organizations on Mills College campus to raise funds for the victims of the earthquake. * Organizing volunteers to fundraise across campus (wherever there is a lot of human traffic) - using informative posters, flyers, loud voices, and lots of donation boxes! * New York, Oct 21: SAWCC is organizing a fund-raiser with performances, readings and sale of visual art. 100% of proceeds will be donated to the Edhi Foundation and to community members giving direct aid at the grassroots level. Please bring in-kind donations of painkillers, blankets, and warm clothing. Home-made food will be served. * Bay Area, CA, Oct 17: South Asian community is organizing a fund-raiser dinner event inviting employees of several companies from the area as well as representatives from several relief organizations to provide details of the relief operations and their specific needs. * Bellevue, WA: Bellevue Mosque raised $41,000 for relief efforts * East Coast: Green Wristband Campaign. Buying bands for $0.30 and selling for $3 each. Contact info TBD * Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA: $4000 raised from online and on-campus fundraising. Resources :See help on uploading files for the wiki :''You can also use the Wiki's own feature: '' : http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/psa/ : Canadian Govt will match your Canadian donations! http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/AllDocIds/A4300ADC297E3756852570980068385B?OpenDocument Posters * Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has made a poster. * Nadia Islam has made a poster. * Fiza Asar has made a poster. * Emullah has made a poster. Emails :An email taken from the sa_earthquake2005 yahoogroup. Use the sample email for asking for quake funds. Questions URGENT: Effective 'webpage for donations' needed : The administration at CMU will be putting up a webpage for donations for earthquake relief on its website. Does anyone have a well-designed page that does the job (ie, convince first-time webpage visitors that this is worth donating to) well? Please respond asap! :'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' ---- Experiences with fund raising efforts at universities / companies : Can people put up the results of their efforts in fundraising at their universities / companies / communities, with descriptions of what exactly your set up was, and how much money you collected in how much time? Do you have any advice on what to do, what not to do, what you think might work but haven't had the opportunity to try? This can really help other people, and also give motivation to everyone in terms of "hey, if students at the Univ of Miami can collect $2000 in 2 days, so can we!". So start writing your fund raising stories here NOW! If there are too many stories to write about, we can move it onto its own separate page later. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) :Mills College, Oakland, CA is a small private women's college. I happen to be the only (ethnic) Pakistani here so keeping all of this in mind, fund raising here is a different experience. Even then I would say, I have received a positive response by far. We started our relief effort yesterday and in one day many people have contacted me. I contacted various student organizations to collaborate and help in relief efforts. We made donation (in kind) boxes and placed them in all the buildings on campus which include academic spaces, social spaces and residence halls. We have also placed donation (in cash) jars in places where cash flow is common such as stores and cafes on campus. I have also sent out emails to all students and professors to donate money. People have talked about giving money in cheque personally to me too. As I will get more update I will report it here. In the meantime I am trying to coordinate with other colleges in the bay area. The South Asian studies department in UC Berkeley has started a relief effort and they have named various organizations where students can donate. I will try and contact their Pakistani Student Association and Muslim Students Association as well. Oh and we are also holding a fund raiser event where there will be student performances, food and a musical night. The proceedings of this event will go to the victims. (Fiza Asar) :McGill University, Montreal, Canada - Ok so this whole thing is being run by the Pakistan Student Association (the student society of McGill is also helping by accepting non-monetary donations at their office) :-we had about 3 large posters with photos of the disaster :-collection boxes (5 or 6) :-lots of little green ribbons that we gave to anyone who wanted one :-little photocopied info pamphlets about the disaster and the PSA website and contacts for accountability :-shouting and asking people to donate in one-on-one and also group interactions as these people were getting their lunch at the caf, going to class, entering the library, or going home from class/lunch/library.. :so basically we had about 7-8 people volunteering at a time... everyone had their own building/floor where there is a lot of student/teacher traffic, and just approached people one by one to donate... once there is a bit of awareness and people know it's gonna last for a week or whatever, people might actually come with prepared envelopes with cash! (one lady came with an envelope of $50 and a huge ziploc bag of coins... - some of them were 5 rupee coins!) :Sami's (PSA volunteer) Fundraising Tips: :1) hold the box in your hand in front of you, that way it is personal and they are giving money to YOU, not just some box on some table.. :2)be polite and say "thank you" whether they give or not :3)don't get discouraged!! people WILL walk by you and pretend you do not exist! try not to take it personally... which is easy because half the time you are thinking about all the thousands that have died and the millions suffering, and someone isnt giving up a quarter for them... relax... just shout and sell as loud as you can and eventually they will come back... trust me... :and in the past week PSA has raised about $10,000!! which, according to The Citizen's Foundation NGO in Pakistan, is enough to rebuild two full homes for two families that desperately need them. THAT'S motivation. Florida International University, Miami, Florida - FIU is a huge public university consisting of 36,000 people in the Miami. On behalf of the Pakistan Students' Association at FIU, several friends and I managed to get a table Monday morning in the middle of the main hallway at the university. Starting with several people, at the end of the day we had over 25 people people working for the cause raising upto 900 dollars on Monday alone. Tuesday brought forth 1400 dollars and Wednesday and Thursday combined gave us a figure of over 1500 dollars. What we did.. - Set up a table at the main hallway. A place where people hang out or walk through. - We put three donation boxes on the table. - We put up four posters with pictures and hardcore facts about the earthqauke. - Our main goal was to spread awareness. We would go upto random people and jolt out these disturbing facts. Even if this approach doesnt result in money, the fact that the person is aware of the tragedy still means a lot. - Our typical approach "excuse me sir have you heard about the recent earthquake in South Asia, 40 thousand dead, sixty thousand wounded, 2.5 million homeless" - Representatives of the club spread throughout the university with this "speading the awareness" attitude. This resulted in a great amount of donations and a great amount of interest. - A lot of people might have been indifferent about our fund raiser, but a great amount of people actually enjoyed talking to us. With the exception of several cases, we recieved postive attitudes from most of the people. - Another useful thing we did was that we went to the offices of many professors and asked them for personal donations. This personal approach is a much more formal one and they donated a great amount of money for our cause. This was just a general overview of what we did and how we did it. We have raised over 3500 dollars so far. We hope to continue raising funds all of next week and gather as much money as we can. How much have we managed to raise? : Can people keep some sort of ballpark figure of how much was raised at your institution? Doesn't need to be accurate, doesn't need to include private donations, maybe just how much was given to a public request. This way we can all know how the overall effort is going, and it can possibly also boost morale. People will need to spend hours and hours of their time at booths/tables, and only if they know it's worth it will they think about doing it. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) : :'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' : McGill Pakistan Student Association, Montreal, Canada- $16,000 and counting - The Canadian Government will also match all Canadian donations made to a Canadian registered NGO. http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/AllDocIds/A4300ADC297E3756852570980068385B?OpenDocument Where is the money going? : What institutions are you promoting? What success have you had with different institutions? I heard that at one place people were very hesitant to donate to Edhi, since they'd never heard of it, but were very happy to donate a lot to the Red Cross. Whatever preferences we may have as fund raisers with respect to one specific organization being more 'worthwhile' than another to raise funds for, I think we're all happy to know that more funds are going to the cause in general than less. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) : Mills College's proceedings will be going to The Citizen's Foundation. (Fiza Asar) : PSA - McGill University proceedings will primarily be going to The Edhi Foundation. When we tell people that it is the most trusted NGO in Pakistan and ESPECIALLY that it is a Canadian-registered charity for which the Canadian government is matching funds, thats usually enough to win them over. :'Post your answer here by clicking edit. Replace this line with your response.' Poster for quake-relief funds : Has anyone designed a large poster to use at donation tables? We're setting up tables at various universities in Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon for sure, Univ of Pittsburgh & Chatham College when we get permission) but we need a large display/poster to put up around there so that we can grab the maximum attention. Does anyone have a high quality poster that they'd like to share? We had a meeting today, and thought that something that is very visual, and very emotional, that grabs attention is the best thing to have. It should also be something that can be printed on a large poster page without looking pixelly. I know there are other people in other organizations looking for such graphics too. Please let me know! (Jahanzeb Sherwani) : Sepoy at Chapati Mystery has made a poster with several different sizes (big enough for printing): *2448 x 3420 jpg 6.4MB *pdf 5.2MB *1200 x 1676 jpg 747KB *648 x 905 jpg 343KB *248 x 347 jpg 100KB : All the links were taken from this post. Short 3 minute documentary summarizing the catastrophe : Does anyone have the footage and skills to make a 3 minute video giving a very quick summary of everything that's happened in the region, as well as the ongoing relief efforts, and answers the question "if I donate, where will my money go?" If there are people who have skills in film editing who need footage, and people who have lots of footage, but need film editors, please say so in a paragraph beneath this question. If you need webspace to transfer huge files over, let me know -- I have access to lots of webspace. I believe this can be very useful in terms of putting an initial hi-quality video that summarizes information, which people in the US can then send to their non-Pakistani colleagues to forward virally. A lot of people didn't watch the footage on TV over the weekend, and now the story isn't as "hot" as it was earlier. We can keep it alive in the public's imagination, but we need a well produced, mini documentary that explains everything a potential donor will want to know. (Jahanzeb Sherwani) Focus on high ticket item "discretionary funds" : Focus on "discretionary funds". A large number of Muslims are going on Haj and/or Umra during the next three months. Everyone who is going to Umra MUST reconsider, and everyone who has already performed the obligatory Haj MUST reconsider as well. The funds are much better spent helping earthquake victims in South Asia, and other places where human beings (NOT JUST MUSLIMS) are in need. Liaquat Ali liaquat222@yahoo.com (http://www.qaiu.org) Write to your Deans: A girl I know at Harvard School of Public Health wrote to the Dean about not having anything on the Harvard School of Public Health webpage on the earthquake. It was quickly revised and now they have added something about it. Perhaps we can all write to our respective universities? (sonia ahsan) Coordinating the Coordination Hello; I am the admin/founder of this site. I just sent an email to the webmasters of a few of the efforts to coordinate earthquake relief efforts (mainly in the US). Please feel free to check it out.User:IFaqeer—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 09:36, 15 Oct 2005 (UTC)